As reported earlier in ANS, the JAWSAT launch (with Amateur Radio's newest satellites)
has been postponed until early 2000. This delayed launch timeframe allows ANS to take
a detailed look at each of the new birds - last week ANS looked at the JAWSAT
multi-payload adapter space-frame that will deploy four independent satellites, including
the Orbiting Picosatellite Automatic Launcher - or OPAL.

OPAL is Stanford University's second satellite as part of a Space Systems Development
Laboratory project known as SQUIRT. The SQUIRT program exposes graduate level students to
all aspects of satellite design, including construction, testing and operations.

OPAL's primary mission is to demonstrate the feasibility of launching multiple
picosatellites from a mothership satellite. The satellite's secondary payloads are an
accelerometer and magnetometer testbed, which will perform component characterization. The
design for OPAL started in early April 1995. If successful, the OPAL picosatellite payload
will provide an end-to-end mission demonstration of mother-and-daughtership technologies.

OPAL is a hexagonal prism, made of quarter-inch aluminum honeycomb panels using a
modular, three-tray approach with each tray containing a different subsystem. OPAL's
weight is about 51 pounds.

For its ground communication link, OPAL will use packet radio transmissions using a UHF
uplink and downlink between 420-450 MHz. Data rate will be 9600 baud.

AMSAT-NA President Keith Baker, KB1SF, brings ANS up to date on the activity
surrounding the Phase 3-D satellite:

Right now, P3-D is still in Orlando, the satellite team has been busy getting the
last-minute paperwork clearances and shipping details in order for shipment to the launch
site at Kourou in French Guiana. The team is waiting on various U.S. government agencies
to issue the final, updated versions of the necessary paperwork and clearance documents.
These documents contain shipping information, specific equipment lists, shipment contents,
final weight and customs documentation needed to allow the international shipping
contractor to actually schedule and then ship not only the P3D spacecraft, but also the
SBS and several pieces of associated ground equipment via commercial airliner to Kourou.
AMSAT has been assured that all clearances are forthcoming and we are simply waiting for
all the paperwork to clear."

KB1SF tells ANS that the P3D team used this time for last minute tweaking on spin
balancing of the spacecraft. "Right now," said President Baker, "all is in
readiness and our plan right now is to have P3-D on the plane to Kourou as soon as
possible."

As ANS has reported, a launch contract accepting Phase 3D as a payload for the
first suitable Arianespace Ariane 5 vehicle launch was signed October 5th.
Arianespace has noted that Phase 3D would be "one of the first secondary
payloads boosted by Ariane 5, which will use a special adapter for orbital
injection." Phase 3D, which weighs 1,430 pounds, will be injected into a
geostationary transfer orbit (GTO). P3D will then use its own propulsion system to reach
an elliptical orbit around the Earth.

[ANS thanks AMSAT-NA President Keith Baker, KB1SF, for this information]

In the final launch attempt available this year, Discovery and its seven astronauts
blasted off Sunday evening on the last human space flight of the 20th century [sic]
to refurbish the Hubble Space Telescope.

Under clear and starry skies at the Kennedy Space Center, Discovery lifted off on time,
lighting up the Central Florida coastline, to send Commander Curt Brown, Pilot Scott Kelly
and Mission Specialists Steve Smith, Jean-Francois Clervoy, John Grunsfeld, Mike Foale and
Claude Nicollier on a two-day chase to catch up to and retrieve the 12 and a half ton
telescope.

Technically, Hubble has been in hibernation since the loss of a fourth gyroscope
designed to enable the telescope to point precisely at distant astronomical targets for
scientific observations. Hubble is in what is known as safe mode -- a state of dormancy in
which the telescope aims itself constantly at the sun to provide electrical power to its
systems.

Once the crew retrieves Hubble, it will be parked at the rear of Discovery's cargo bay
so that two teams of space-walking astronauts can perform repairs and upgrades to its
systems during three nights of space walks. The most vital of the space walks will occur
on Wednesday night, when Smith and Grunsfeld replace all six of Hubble's gyroscopes and
install devices to improve voltage regulation to the telescope's systems.

If all goes as planned, Hubble will be released back into orbit on Christmas Day, with
Discovery landing at the Kennedy Space Center two days later.

Currently, Discovery is orbiting the Earth at an altitude of about 300 nautical miles,
completing one orbit of the Earth every 90 minutes.

Russ Platt, WJ9F, of the AO-16 Command Team tells ANS "it appears that after
1900-plus days of operating, AO-16 suffered a problem that returned it to safe mode."
WJ9F has been able to turn the 70-cm transmitter back on. Russ also reports AO-16 is in
MBL (Microsat Boot Loader) mode and over the next week the team will be downloading the
memory to check for the cause of this problem. The power is currently set to keep the
batteries safe from abuse during this period of reloading.-Russ, WJ9F

FCC Special Counsel for Amateur Radio Enforcement Riley Hollingsworth, K4ZDH, will be
the keynote speaker at the 2000 Dayton Hamvention banquet, set for Saturday,
May 20th. For the first time ever, the Dayton Hamvention will also host the ARRL
National Convention!-ARRL Letter

The APRS Working Group has completed the second public draft of the APRS Protocol
Specification. The document covers the core functionality of APRS Protocol
Version 1.0. The Specification contains many examples of how APRS data is formatted
to make it easier to understand. The APRS Protocol Specification draft is available as an
Adobe PDF file at http://www.tapr.org/tapr/html/Faprswg.html.-ARRL/John Ackermann, N8UR

For those that keep track, the December solstice occurs at 2:44 a.m. EST on
the 22nd of this month. This is when the Sun ends its six-month journey southward in the
sky and begins its six-month return north. This moment officially marks the start of
winter in the Northern Hemisphere and summer in the Southern Hemisphere. Also, the full
moon on this date is slightly nearer to Earth than average and will appear slightly
brighter, but the difference will be too small for most to notice -- despite some claims
that say the Moon will become astonishingly brilliant. For the facts behind the
exaggerations, see the Sky & Telescope article at http://www.skypub.com/news/news.html.-S&T

Operational, in mode-KA with a 10-meter downlink and a 15-meter and 2-meter uplink.

Dick, N3DV, tells ANS that RS-13 seems to be back to normal. "It operated very
well in Mode K this past week. On 10-December, for the very first time in
5 years of RS-12/13 work, I worked over the horizon to SM7VXS in southern
Sweden."

Dave, WB6LLO, has operating information for both RS-15 and RS-13 on his personal web
site. In addition to satellite data, antenna information for mode A operation is also
featured. The WB6LLO web site URL is http://home.san.rr.com/doguimont/uploads

AO-27 uses a method called Timed Eclipse Power Regulation (TEPR) to regulate the
on-board batteries. In simple terms, TEPR times how long the satellite has been in the
eclipse (or in the sun) and decides what subsystems to turn on or off. The AO-27 pages on
the AMSAT-NA web site include an explanation of AO-27 operations at http://www.amsat.org/amsat/sats/n7hpr/ao27.html

JAS-2 was successfully launched on August 17, 1996, by an H-II launch vehicle from
the Tanegashima Space Center.

Mike, KF4FDJ, has put together a very informative document on FO-29, addressing analog,
digital and digi-talker modes. To obtain a copy e-mail Mike at kf4fdj@amsat.org

Kazu, JJ1WTK, reports the FO-29 operational schedule (announced by the JARL) is as
follows:

through December 19th

JD 1200bps PSK mailbox

December 20 - January 11th

JA

Mineo, JE9PEL, has updated his FO-29 satellite telemetry analysis program. The software
will automatically analyze all digital telemetry from the satellite such as current,
voltage and temperature. The JE9PEL FO-29/software update is available at http://www.ne.jp/asahi/hamradio/je9pel/

ANS has learned (from HL0ENJ) that satellite downlink telemetry shows two of KO-23's
battery cells to be very unstable. Jim, AA7KC, reports KO-23 is not operational. Stay
tuned to ANS for further developments.

Russ Platt, WJ9F, of the AO-16 Command Team tells ANS "it appears that after
1900-plus days of operating, AO-16 suffered a problem that returned it to safe mode."
WJ9F has been able to turn the 70-cm transmitter back on. Russ also reports AO-16 is in
MBL (Microsat Boot Loader) mode and over the next week the team will be downloading the
memory to check for the cause of this problem.

Chris, G7UPN, recently reloaded TO-31 with the new flight software to fix a few minor
Y2K issues. TO-31 users may also note that many of the high resolution color images on
TMSAT are now compressed using a UoSAT compression format. This format is supported by the
VK5HI CCD display program.

Uplink/downlink frequencies have not been established.
The satellite is not currently available for uplink transmissions.

PANSAT, developed by the Naval Postgraduate School, was launched from the shuttle
Discovery. PANSAT spread-spectrum digital transponders will be available to amateur radio
operators in the near future along with software to utilize this technology.

Dan Sakoda, KD6DRA, PANSAT Project Manager recommends 'The ARRL Spread Spectrum
Sourcebook' as a good place to start in understanding the spread-spectrum scheme.

Semi-operational. SunSat has been in mode-B using an uplink of 436.291 MHz (+/-
Doppler) and a 145.825 MHz downlink.

SunSat was launched February 23, 1999 aboard a Delta II rocket from
Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. SunSat stands for Stellenbosch University
Satellite and takes it name from the South African university whose students constructed
the payload.

The SunSat package includes 1200 and 9600 baud digital store-and-forward
capability and a voice 'parrot' repeater system that will be used primarily for
educational demonstrations. The satellite has two VHF and two UHF transmit-receive
systems.

The SunSat schedule is as follows (supplied by Henry Chamberlain, ZS1AAZ):

UoSAT-12 was successfully launched on April 21, 1999 from the Russian Baikonur
Cosmodrome. UO-36 carries a number of imaging payloads, digital store-and-forward
communications and mode L/S transponders.

The satellite is not currently available for general uplink transmissions.

S-band high speed downlink commissioning continues at rates between 128kb/s and 1Mb/s.
The S-band downlink frequency has not been announced.

UO-36 has been transmitting 9600-baud FSK telemetry framed in a VLSI format using a
downlink frequency of 437.400 MHz. Chris, G7UPN, reports UO-36 is also (at times)
testing on 437.025 MHz at a baud rate of 38,400 (38k4). Currently, this downlink
is switched on over Europe. Due to the limited power on UO-36, it is not possible to have
this downlink on permanently over all areas.

Updated status. Shlomo, 4X1AS, tells ANS that efforts are underway to bring GO-32 on
line. According to Dr. Fred Ortenberg of the Asher Space Research Institute in Haifa,
"the TechSat control team is about to finish its Amateur Radio BBS package tests. The
next stage is to add beacon messages about the satellite's housekeeping status."

Stay tuned to ANS for further information.

The TechSat-1B micro-satellite was successfully launched from the Russian Baikonur
Cosmodrome on July 10, 1998.

Last reported, the satellite does not have a continuous beacon, but does transmit a
9600-baud burst every 30 seconds (for about 3 seconds in length), currently on
435.225 MHz.

The TechSat team has constructed a home page about TechSat. To view the site, point
your web browser to:

The following satellites are in orbit but are non-operational at this time:

Ham radio activity aboard the Mir space station came to a close on August 28, 1999
as the crew returned to Earth, leaving the station unmanned. Mir is in a stable orbit with
only essential systems running. All amateur radio activities have ceased. Currently, the
station is being prepared for re-entry sometime in the first quarter of 2000. However, the
final fate of the space station has not been formally announced. Stay tuned to ANS for
further developments.